Board Game Arena

Hello dear BGA and players,

I just wanted to add my voice to the many other ones... this new presentation of the games in progress page is really bad.
The colors used everywhere give us a patchwork really terrible visually, even when you don't have any trouble of vision.
It's not simple anymore to see informations clearly, at a glance.

Please, could you give us the choice to come back to the old presentation ?

For anyone else annoyed by the ad-like banners of empty arena/tournament section: I've created some custom CSS to try and hide those sections optionally. I can't test it fully (because I have no tournament or arena games), but my hope is that this will only hide those sections if they are empty.
Edit: it seems the section will just always be hidden, and in that case you can simplify it to this: You can of course play around with how much you want to hide.

KenFin1 wrote: ↑07 February 2024, 13:34

titi-togepi wrote: ↑07 February 2024, 13:24

KenFin1 wrote: ↑07 February 2024, 12:53

In what way does it make it easier to find your game information? Do you mean stuff is more spaced out than before? That might be true but I can no longer see the player experiences for example so I find this version to provide less information.

What do you mean by player experiences?

Strong, Beginner etc. See the format in the old lobby which you can still view here https://boardgamearena.com/lobby. They appear below the player names (during table creation). Format was the same in the tables in progress page. Not anymore with this new design.

Oh yes i see it isn't here anymore. But the new interface is prettier, and it's plesanter (at least to me) to read.

lammetje wrote: ↑07 February 2024, 13:58 For anyone else annoyed by the ad-like banners of empty arena/tournament section: I've created some custom CSS to try and hide those sections optionally. I can't test it fully (because I have no tournament or arena games), but my hope is that this will only hide those sections if they are empty.

Code: Select all

#section-arena div div :not(div.bga-game-progress-list-section-grid),#section-tournament div div :not(div.bga-game-progress-list-section-grid) {
  visibility:hidden;
  height:0;
}

Edit: it seems the section will just always be hidden, and in that case you can simplify it to this:

Code: Select all

#section-arena div div,#section-tournament div div {
  visibility:hidden;
  height:0;
}

You can of course play around with how much you want to hide.

Thanks. I don't understand why those sections don't just autohide if no relevant games are in progress, with an option arrow to expand them if someone really wants to (e.g. just to make sure they're not missing something). They added a hide option for the top bar that (mostly) works. Why not these other areas?

KenFin1 wrote: ↑07 February 2024, 14:14

lammetje wrote: ↑07 February 2024, 13:58 ...

Thanks. I don't understand why those sections don't just autohide if no relevant games are in progress, with an option arrow to expand them if someone really wants to (e.g. just to make sure they're not missing something). They added a hide option for the top bar that (mostly) works. Why not these other areas?

Yeah, I don't get that either. Hopefully they'll add that in an update.
I'm not a fan of the color scheme/design of the table cards. They feel busy and cluttered. But hiding the "empty" areas clears up a lot of the visual violence and makes the page at least usable again for me.

lammetje wrote: ↑07 February 2024, 14:23

KenFin1 wrote: ↑07 February 2024, 14:14

lammetje wrote: ↑07 February 2024, 13:58 ...

Thanks. I don't understand why those sections don't just autohide if no relevant games are in progress, with an option arrow to expand them if someone really wants to (e.g. just to make sure they're not missing something). They added a hide option for the top bar that (mostly) works. Why not these other areas?

Yeah, I don't get that either. Hopefully they'll add that in an update.
I'm not a fan of the color scheme/design of the table cards. They feel busy and cluttered. But hiding the "empty" areas clears up a lot of the visual violence and makes the page at least usable again for me.

If I've understood correctly this current format has been developed by BGA, tested, had feedback, and released. You have done in one morning what they arguably ought to have picked up during development stage, and certainly during testing. If this is the refined version they released I'm glad I didn't have to encounter the alpha/ beta versions!

KenFin1 wrote: ↑07 February 2024, 14:29

lammetje wrote: ↑07 February 2024, 14:23

KenFin1 wrote: ↑07 February 2024, 14:14
Thanks. I don't understand why those sections don't just autohide if no relevant games are in progress, with an option arrow to expand them if someone really wants to (e.g. just to make sure they're not missing something). They added a hide option for the top bar that (mostly) works. Why not these other areas?

Yeah, I don't get that either. Hopefully they'll add that in an update.
I'm not a fan of the color scheme/design of the table cards. They feel busy and cluttered. But hiding the "empty" areas clears up a lot of the visual violence and makes the page at least usable again for me.

If I've understood correctly this current format has been developed by BGA, tested, had feedback, and released. You have done in one morning what they arguably ought to have picked up during development stage, and certainly during testing. If this is the refined version they released I'm glad I didn't have to encounter the alpha/ beta versions!

It was picked up and reported during the testing phase. For reasons I am not privy to, the decision was seemingly made not to allow hiding or moving the arena image bar.

If this is a conscious design decision it would be great to know why.

GTSchemer wrote: ↑07 February 2024, 14:50 If this is a conscious design decision it would be great to know why.

Maybe it's to make new players know Arena mode exists, and encourage them to try it ?

thoun wrote: ↑07 February 2024, 15:10

GTSchemer wrote: ↑07 February 2024, 14:50 If this is a conscious design decision it would be great to know why.

Maybe it's to make new players know Arena mode exists, and encourage them to try it ?

This is a good point in that it's exactly the sort of motivation I would like to know about. Let's say, theoretically, that is the motivation: We want new players to consider trying Arena mode.

In practice, I argue the effect is this:


A. On a new player, the first 5 or 10 times they see the page, maybe it works.

B. On an experienced player who plays neither Arena nor Tournament mode, the impact may be minimal since most of their games are Play.

C. On an experienced player with 50 active Tournament games, it's truly annoying since such a player clearly knows about Arena, and has to see the banner every time they see the page.

D. For an experienced player who does not want to play Arena, it probably further cements their decision NOT to play, since it is such a visual irritant to see.

E. For those of us who are neurodivergent / autistic / visually sensitive / getting up there in years, it is actively painful to have so much visual noise in a clean, utilitarian list (see more detailed comments by others today).


By my math, this is low impact for new players and a subset of existing players, but I suspect a large number of BGA players play tournaments and are going to be negatively impacted. In addition, the negative impact on more vulnerable players due to the loss of accessibility is harmful.


Another example of this is the very longstanding issue of every time you switch to a new turn-based game, when you have 50 in progress, the "Did you know you can make notes?" popup appears. Everyone knows this who has played a few turn-based games, yet it still appears to those who have played 1000 turn-based games, and it becomes agonizing to those who have to switch through 20 consecutive turn-based games in a row, watching it cover the score or part of the scoreboard every time. It is fixed by 2-3 lines of CSS, and I wonder how someone can make the decision not to approve this fix unless they aren't playing many turn-based games.

Oh god, wtf happened to my games-in-progress quick list, visible by tapping my avatar at top right. It used to be so easy to read and see everything I wanted. Now there's a bunch of detail about each game and I can only see the several at the top of the list. Revert. Where's the option in settings to see classic view on that panel??????????????



?????????????




???????????